Dr. Suzanne Burke, HoD
Senior Lecturer, Cultural Studies
Suzanne D. Burke PhD
Suzanne Burke is a Cultural Studies scholar whose work employs the domain of culture as a pathway to Caribbean socio-economic transformation. Her research focuses on Caribbean culture, carnival, industries in culture, creative entrepreneurship and management as these relate to the development and evaluation of cultural policies and programmes.
She is a dedicated teacher who employs radical pedagogies to create new epistemologies about cultural studies arts-based practice and creative entrepreneurship.
She has worked extensively with a wide cross section of public sector enterprises, civil society organisations and private agencies in the areas of strategic planning, human resource development, policy analysis, cultural sector mapping and planning, and audience impact analysis.
Qualification
- PhD Sociology, University of Essex
- MA Employment and Labor Studies, Institute of Social Sciences (The Hague)
- BA Psychology, York University
- PG Certificate Education by Practice, Essex University, The United Kingdom
Research Interests
- Industries in culture
- Arts based research and its related pedagogies
- Creative Entrepreneurship
- Creative Clusters
- Cultural Policies
- Carnival and Festival Studies
- Audience Motivations and Attendance
- The Nature of Creative Work
- Popular Culture
Featured Work
- 2026 - Memory, Politics and Performance in the Trinidad Carnival Complex. Edited by S. Burke. New Beacon Press. London. (in press).
- 2025 – Caribbean Industries in Culture: Developing Sustainable Actions for the Creative Ecology. Routledge: London:
- 2023 - Journey Round Myself: Crossing Borders, Strengthening Connections, Breaking Boundaries in the Caribbean Cultural Ecology. Edited by S. Burke. Ian Randle Publishers. Miami, Kingston.
- 2026 - “Carnivalism as Ways of Life in Trinidad & Tobago”. Memory, Politics and Performance in the Trinidad Carnival Complex, edited by S. Burke. New Beacon Press, 2024, pp 6-20. (in press).
- 2023: “Introduction.” Journey Round Myself: Crossing Borders, Strengthening Connections, Breaking Boundaries in the Caribbean Cultural Ecology, edited by S. Burke. Ian Randle Publishers, 2023, pp ix-xvii.
- 2017 - “The Evolution of the Cultural Policy Regime in the Anglophone Caribbean.” Cultural Policy: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, Chapter 25, Volume 2, edited by K. Oakley and D. O’Brien. Routledge, 2017. (reprinted from International Jo
- 2016 -“Literary Arts and Book Publishing in the Anglophone Caribbean.” Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance, edited by Y. Hume and A. Kamugisha, Ian Randle Publishers, 2016, pp. 726-745.
- 2012 - “Policing the People’s Festival: State policy and the Trinidad Carnival Complex.” Carnival – Theory and Practice, edited by C. Innes, A. Rutherford, and B. Bogar, Africa World Press, 2012, pp. 107-123.
- 2022 - Introduction: “Dreadness: The Mystical Power, Philosophy and Performance of Shadow: 1942-2021.” Tout Moun: Caribbean Journal of Cultural Studies, Issue 7(1), 2022, pp 2-6. Co-edited with Granger, C., Matthews, D. and Regis, H.
- 2019- “Re-imagining the local in national cultural policy formulation – the case of the Anglophone Caribbean.” Cultural Trends, Vol. 28 (4), 2019, pp. 269-280.
Courses Taught
- CLTR 6030: Dynamics of Caribbean Culture
- CLTR 6000: Theory and Conceptualisation of Culture
- CLTR 6100: Methods of Inquiry
- CLTR 6010: Debates in Caribbean Cultural Identity
- CLTR 6230: Caribbean Creative and Popular Culture
- CLTR 7002/8002 – Contemporary Cultural Theory
